The Day William Shatner Tweeted at an Astronaut (and the Astronaut Replied)

That day, my friends, is today.

William Shatner @WilliamShatner

@Cmdr_Hadfield Are you tweeting from space? MBB
___________________

Chris Hadfield @Cmdr_Hadfield

@WilliamShatner Yes, Standard Orbit, Captain. And we're detecting signs of life on the surface.

So this just happened:

William Shatner, he of Priceline and also of spoken-word poetry but mostly of Star Trek, is also William Shatner of Twitter. And this afternoon, the actor took to the service to ask a question of the Canadian Space Agency's Chris Hadfield, who is currently serving as the International Space Station's Flight Engineer for Expedition 34 -- and who has indeed been tweeting from space.

Hadfield's glorious reply to this glorious question is above. And there really is not much more to be said about the matter. Except that, basically, a fake starship captain just sent a tweet to a real-life space station engineer, who replied using the language of the fake starship captain ... and all of us got to see it. And then retweet it. And then make lame-but-awesome Star Trek-related jokes about it. MBB: What a world.

16. I never knew!

23. Data was just a FREAKIN' WUNNNNNNNDERFUL character!!!

One of my all-time favorite Next-Gen episodes was "Data's Day," which followed Data around from his getting off the overnight shift in command on the Enterprise bridge and then going about the rest of the regular day (Data didn't need to sleep. His quarters did not have a bed). So we followed him around the ship as he considered a wedding gift for Chief O'Brien and his fiancee Keiko, and tried to advise Lt. Worf on one, as he fed and petted Spot, tried to learn to dance for the wedding from Dr. Crusher ("NOBODY better find out I used to be known as the 'dancing doctor'!"), and she thought he meant tap-dancing. And it went on.

It was just the sweetest, most fun, most engrossing, most enjoyable little slice-of-life episode. No phasers. No photon torpedoes. No chase scenes at Warp 8.5. No fist-fights with aliens. No explosions or time warps or quantum singularities or any such thing. Just a day-in-the-life. And it was JUST WUNNNNNDERFUL!!!

35. Oh MAN, I loved that one, too!

Paul Winfield played that alien - did a very good job making him an adversary who becomes a very sympathetic character.

Also liked "Haven," in which Data had a line that my husband and I continue to use - to this very day! "Please continue the petty bickering. I find it most intriguing!" One of my favorite "Star Trek" lines of all time, up there along with "he's dead, Jim"!!! Another one of those moments when Data is observing Deanna Troy's mother and would-be mother-in-law in a awkwardly-contained cat fight. Hilarious!!!!

One other episode I really love is "Family," when Picard goes home to France after this two-parter where he's captured and assimilated by the Borg. WUNNNNNderful writing and performances - conflict and sibling rivalry and a whole lot of wonderfulness, especially where Picard and his brother Robert get drunk together after rolling around in a fistfight in the mud.

Just all these little moments that I really, really appreciate. Around here, when there have been some conflicts within the band, I've tried to point out that "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one." "Star Trek" is a cultural GIFT!

6. Cool!

15. Welcome to DU, A Little Weird!

What a great thread! Glad you're here to enjoy it - and more - with us. I LOVE all things "Star Trek"! Always have, since the original series. And I was hot for Spock. I still remember the TV Guide issue whose cover story featured Mr. Spock and the question - "is it sexy to be smart?" That's because Spock had every bit as big a following as he-man sex symbol male-lead Captain Kirk, and many many women were (surprisingly to some) utterly mad for him.

7. Shatner is Canadian. :D My friend was on the board to build a mcauliffe

center here in the boondocks of Alaska. She got some kids stuff on board a shuttle and when it was in space orbiting, got a download to our school so we could sit in the library and ask questions of a lady astronaut. She was floating in the ship. It was awesome.

9. Make it so!

11. I remember a number of years ago,

not many. a couple guys who were on the space shuttle, I think it was, called Click and Clack. The actually called them. And Tom and Ray and I, and I assume many others, were totally fooled for a few minutes. I seem to remember they said something about having a problem with sudden acceleration, and some other issues.. it was quite hilarious when Tom and Ray- and I- finally realized who they were.